Sheila Pree Bright

Sheila Pree Bright is a fine- art photographer nationally known for the photographic series Young Americans, Plastic Bodies, and Suburbia. Described in the art world as a cultural anthropologist, Bright strives to engage her audience to think critically about contemporary culture.

As I observe the state of the country, I feel art can be a form of activism to create awareness and bring shared communities together to critically look at ongoing social and political struggles across the nation. #1960Now is a participatory and interactive exhibition interpreting intergenerational views of activism through social engaged art. I would like to inspire dialogue that’s most needed in this critical moment in our country between races, genders and generations.

— Sheila Pree Bright

DRAWING PARALLELS

#1960Now is Bright's journey documenting the responses to police shooting in Atlanta, Ferguson, Baltimore, Washington, D.C. and Baton Rouge. She observed young social activists taking a stand against the same struggles their parents and grandparents endured during the era of Jim Crow. In 2013 while photographing under-recognized living leaders of the Civil Rights movement, she made a connection between today’s times and the climate of the 1960's that inspired this project. This series examines race, gender and generational divides to raise awareness of millennial perspectives on civil and human rights. Bright incorporates an Instagram campaign into #1960Now, within which she asks people in the streets what they will do to bring about change.

LIVING LEADERS

1960 Whois a collection of photographic portraits wheat-pasted on community walls, depicting grassroot people who stood-up against bullies during the Civil Rights Movement. Youth leaders photographed include those who took a stand during the Atlanta Student Movement, Chicago Freedom Movement, Freedom Riders, The Children's Crusades and Poor People's Campaign. While honoring these leaders who are alive to witness today's climate, we are ushered to question the nature of change and our efforts as present individuals.

A selection of images from one of Florida's most prolific photographers, Gary Monroe. The exhibition spans over four decades of Monroe's Street Photography, and pulls images from South Beach, Miami, Little Haiti, The Magic Kingdom, and Florida's landscape. Click here for more info

It is important to recognize that Temkin captures, not an unnoticed feature of the built landscape, but a significant shift in architectural expression. This architecture is a new artistic medium in which nature and humanity contribute equally. It represents a departure from the traditions of the past in which buildings were conceived in opposition to nature.

— Roger Schickedantz, from the introduction to the book Rooftop: Photography by Brad Temkin

Randolph Street (Looking North), Chicago May 2010

X06_City Hall (Looking Northeast) Chicago July 2011

The elevated landscapes from the Rooftop series represent the judicious reintroduction of nature into urban settings. The photographs reveal that through grace and ingenuity, we may be able to construct a healthier environment and a more responsible infrastructure.

This project, book and exhibition have been embraced by leaders in the field of green architecture, as well as museum curators and collectors. Images from this series have been exhibited in venues nationally and internationally, from San Francisco to Russia. The photographs selected for this traveling exhibition were featured this fall in Second Nature: A Survey – Photographs by Brad Temkin at the Southeast Museum of Photography in Daytona Beach, Florida, with a supplemental display of images from the Rooftop series at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. This traveling exhibition will be available to tour beginning in January of 2016.

My images do more than merely document rooftop gardens. By securely situating the gardens within the steel, stone, and glass rectangularity of urban downtowns, I ask viewers to revel in their far more open patterns, colors, and connection to the sky. In this break, I see not merely beauty and dichotomy, but the framework for positive change.“ – Brad Temkin

— Brad Temkin

ABOUT THE PHOTOGRAPHER

Brad Temkin is an award winning Chicago-based photographer who has been documenting human and environmental relationships throughout his career in photography. Widely known for his contemporary landscape images, his work is held in numerous permanent collections, including those of The Art Institute of Chicago; Milwaukee Art Museum; Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Akron Art Museum, Ohio; and Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago, among others. His images have appeared in such publications as Aperture, Black & White Magazine, TIME Magazine and European Photography. A monograph of Mr. Temkin’s work entitled Private Places: Photographs of Chicago Gardens was published in 2005 by Center for American Places. He has been an adjunct professor at Columbia College in Chicago since 1984, and a lecturer and visiting artist at numerous institutions in the United States and abroad. Temkin’s second book entitled ROOFTOP published by Radius Books (www.radiusbooks.org) was released in October 2015.

Exhibitions and programs at the Southeast Museum of Photography are supported in part by Daytona State College, Volusia Echo and the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on the Arts. Daytona State College prohibits discrimination and assures equal opportunity in employment and education services to all individuals without regard to age, ancestry, belief, color, disability, ethnicity, genetic information, gender, marital status, national origin, political affiliation, race, religion, sex, and veteran status. For more details, read our Equal Opportunity Statement